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User blog:LeMansRacer/The Development Process - Need for Speed: World
Need for Speed: World's developers will be celebrating the 2nd anniversary of the title's launch back in July, 2010. World has had a fairly mixed reaction from its fan base over the years but has also been a great stepping stone for the genre. This blog post is going to highlight the development process and changes to the design of World so far. This post is from a design, development and refinement perspective - so don't expect anything like "bring back the old skill system" - although why was altered is also covered. Publishing & Development? So, EA wanted a new racing MMO - actually - let's stop there for a second and talk about the difference between a publisher and a developer. *A publisher (EA, THQ, Ubisoft, Activision, Microsoft Game Studios, Sony, Sega) is a business, they want games made, out the door and being profitable - they'll see how good a game idea is or how profitable it could be and work out a marketing strategy. *A developer (Black Box, Volition, Ubisoft Montreal, Infantry Ward, Turn 10, Naughty Dog, Team Sonic) is a group of creative and technologically capable individuals. These are the people that make the game, these are the people that design the game, these are the people that spend too much time making them perfect for fans - but, most importantly - they answer to the publisher. This can be seen in a different way. A person owns a warehouse and has the necessary equipment to make a product (publisher). That person needs to hire staff to work in that factory to create a product (developer). From then on that product could be either pushed into development by the person that owns the factory or a group of people employed to come up with new products that they could make. I hope that makes sense because, seriously, I've been on the World forums and some people herp so much derp that it's dangerous - they could break their spine with all the derp they're hauling. 'Beginning Development' Computer Games usually begin in one of two ways; either a concept is created and shown to a publisher or a publisher will demand a studio work towards a design of a game. One of these happened and for World I believe it was EA (publisher) that got the ball rolling for a new racing MMO title. EA saw that Black Box was knee deep in Need for Speed: Undercover and so couldn't get any staff to work on a new MMO. EA Singapore is fairly freed up as it was around 3 years old (opened in 2005) meaning they had staff that could work on a new MMO. As the Need for Speed license is owned by EA and not Black Box, it something EA could easily do. Now EA Singapore works on developing the title for a few months or years using existing content from previous games. Suddenly something happens and Black Box becomes apart of the development process for World. A team that had just received a bad thrashing by reviewers for Undercover but proven time and time again to be a competent development studio. Yeah competent, they were churning out Need for Speed games a year between each other with less than 16 months development time. Considering how short an amount of time they had, they were really good. At some point now the content transitioned from EA Singapore (developer) to Black Box. Now, another weird thing happened - EA was gearing up to release an MMO for the Asia market. But, hang on - why did they have EA Singapore develop a Need for Speed MMO in the first place then? Simply because Need for Speed is more of a western franchise, its something that's more apart of our culture in the same way other franchises are apart of theirs. This can be seen in other racing games such as Gran Turismo. Gran Turismo is such a Japanese game that it gets a little big silly over here because the game, at least the older titles, were close to having something along the lines of 1 in 7 cars not be a Japanese made model. So you had this game that was "the real driving simulator" letting you simulate a car as long as it was a Japanese car you wanted to simulate driving. By this point World was in Black Box's hands but EA wanted to see if the Need for Speed series would work in Asia. Here comes the Asia beta tests to see if the game was both working for an MMO environment and if it could catch the eye of MMO players. MMO games in Asia are as big as shooters in the west - that's not me being stereotypical over those stories we all hear, it's just the culture differences. So, in the end World in asia - didn't take off back then. That would also explain why there isn't an Asia server option even after the server alterations. If anyone want's to know what happened to the work by EA Singapore, look up a game called "RayCity" - it's obviously recycled some content from World here and there. It's also developed by EA Seoul but not published by EA for Asia (also, the servers are based in Singapore, so don't expect a stable connection). 'Black Box is Back at the Wheel' Black Box was now developing the soon to be announced re-announced Need for Speed: World. By this point the content for the game was still being developed. The beta sessions in Asia involved a few areas such as Rosewood and Silverton with the content for those areas having a fairly big degree of polish. The development of World has turned towards re-creating the rest of Palmont City and Rockport. It sounds simple enough, re-import some content, re-texture them and it's done.... it's not that simple. The simple part is that the geometry for World has already been laid out before and they now what was wrong with the old models. Now they had to spend the same amount of time re-creating a game's content as any developer would spend making content for a new game. People seem to forget that - a remake doesn't just mean a re-release, it means a re'make', they're making a game from scratch to be like an older game. Beta Testing Beta testing is a usual affair in many regards. It's a chance to test a game but nowadays publishers use them more as a marketing tool because they can easily say to someone - "Were still working on it" - if they don't like something. I've been over the Need for Speed: World Beta in a previous blog post. Release and continued Development The continued development of Need for Speed: World has been a mixed bag of success and failure. Where there is success, there is also a bigger failure that people dwell on. Let's look at what has been developed and released so far since the release two years ago; *A long list of cars *Completion of Palmont City and Rockport *Two new gamemodes *A skill system change Now I remember Marc (Marc De Vellis - Producer) & Drew (NFSDrew - Community Manager) saying once in an episode of Ask Marc that "it takes 6 weeks to create a car for the game." Did that shock you in anyway that it takes 6 weeks to get a car into a game like Need for Speed: World? If it did then your opinion on World is no longer valid because that is a perfectly normal amount of time for a game like Need for Speed: World. 'Cars' Here is a list of steps Black Box will have to take in order to get a car into the game; #The car's manufacturer must approve the usage of their vehicle in the game #The car has to be modeled in a 3D application software (3DS Max, Maya, etc) #The car has to be UVW Unwrapped to create a flat image that can be textured #The car has to be imported into the game engine and work with current content #The car has to be customisable with current content; Wheels, plates, neons #The car has to be correctly lit within the engine - Confused? Reply at the bottom #The car has to accept current shader effects and materials #The car has to alter its LOD (Level of detail) correctly for all computer configurations #The car has to be balanced against other cars #The car's performance upgrades have to be balanced with upgraded cars #Testing of car #The car must be altered at any of the previous steps if an error occurs during testing and then continue towards testing from that failed step. #The car has to be capable of being altered if need be in the future #The finished car has to accepted for usage by the manufacturer #The car must now be applied to the released game via a patch So why are there so many cars in Need for Speed: World? For the obvious reasons that all fans know - cars are easier, quicker and cheaper to get into the game. A new car could easily help provide an income to cover the cost of the servers, staff, marketing and royalties. 'Game Modes' Game modes are a tricky aspect of game design. Yeah, tricky - you've probably read this thinking "the hardest part about making a game.... is making game!? lol, gtfo!" But this is true, a game mode has to be fun or else people get annoyed because it isn't fun and ultimately stop playing a game because it is no longer fun. So, why haven't there been a greater number of game modes even though such content has been proven to exist in some form in the game content files? Well, I couldn't tell you that but I could give you a few reasons why they might not have been pushed for release; #An older game mode might have been fun in an older game but not in World #An older game mode doesn't fit with the current design of World #An older game mode simply doesn't work at all any more Game modes become really stale after they've been reused so many times like games with Deathmatch game modes. Some game modes might be fun for others but not fun for the rest of the fan base. I've seen too many people asking for a Tollbooth game mode in World. Tollbooth is a single player mode, you could do that yourself by timing yourself between two points. 'Canyons' Canyons have been thrown around too many times by Black Box. In fact, I'm going to delay this part of the blog for next week. Next Week - Canyons and Skill Mods Category:Blog posts